In various service-oriented architecture (SOA) environments, requests for data may be transmitted from a client to a service application deployed at a data center. After the service application receives the request, the service application identifies a physical server that has access to the requested data. In particular, many enterprises have large numbers of physical servers hosting data, where the physical servers are typically distributed between different data centers that may be geographically remote from each other. Thus, the service application may be required to forward the data request to another data center at which the appropriate physical server is located.